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Microsoft vs. Northwest Schools Part III
SymphonicMan writes: "As previously discussed on Slashdot, Microsoft threatened an audit for the 24 largest school districts in the Northwest. Now it appears they may be backing down, according to Steve Duin, the Oregonian columnist who orginally brought this to all of our attention in April. Not only that, he writes that Portland Public Schools is opening 16 Linux computer labs across the districts, at half the cost of a Microsoft-equipped lab. Looks like this might be more than just a PR victory for open source. I'm a senior in one of the districts (Beaverton) included in the audit, and our staff is still going crazy trying to comply. But with districts across Oregon facing major budget shortfalls due to the poor economy, removing the pressure of this audit would be very welcome."
True, not only is this a PR victory for Linux, but more youth will be exposed to Linux and not only will they learn how to use a different operating system, they'll also pick up the abilities to adapt to learning new OSes. In time, this trend can be picked up in schools around the nation. In time, kids will show their parents how to use Linux, just as ten years ago, kids showed their parents how to use Windows.
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
They would give away operating systems to schools, so that they could compete with the absurd dominance of Mac in schools.
Then the students would grow up learning MS, and would be more likely to purchase/be dependent on it later on.
- They'll have a longer product cycle (Macs last forever and retain their value much better than cobbled-together PCs), which means the district won't have to upgrade their hardware nearly as often.
- They'll upgrade their software for much less than with a Windows solution and they won't be compelled to upgrade.
- Macs are already entrenched in education for a good reason: they're ease of use is legendary. Quartz is, without a doubt, the best user interface ever.
- There is a plethora of commercial applications for Mac OS. These are generally easier to use and are better-supported than Free software applications.
- They're inexpensive. You can already get an iMac for $799, and the education discounts that Apple gives are significant.
So, while I don't want to start a flame war here, I do believe that Apple is the most logical solution for education. While Linux is an excellent OS for those who love choice, freedom and hacking (in the "programming" context), it isn't really ready for widespread use on the desktops of non-technical users."I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
I question the truth of this post. It's rather simple to make sweeping 'man on the street' statements about a company's practice without giving any hard details about the story and this type of attack can lead to some rather convincing evidence, in the public's mind. But what we have here is a story that is quite flimsy. As much as Microsoft controls the media, it's a bit odd that the author of this post offers no link to a news bulletin about this. I mean, certainly it was covered somewhere. The local paper should have picked up on it. Where is the link, my friend? And a few 486s running Win95? Microsoft has much bigger fish to fry.
It's not that I'm implying that you're a liar. It's that I am calling you a liar.
Note: this isn't flamebait. I just want people to give some proof of the statements they make when they are not simply voicing opinions. I really don't think this story is true.
"There is an advantage to teaching kids on multiple operating systems. However Unix is not at all suitable for general introductory courses."
You're wrong there. Young kids are a clean slate. Their minds are not yet warped by one way of doing things. Kids can follow instructions and will adapt to whatever you put in front of them.
Kids learn better with a lump of clay than they do with a solid block of concrete...
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
However, if they are learning the "Business" side of the systems, they will be sorely lacking in how to run MS based Windows applications, which apparently is what 90% of the computers in the world run.
I have to applaud the efforts of the schools themselves, being as I live in the area and do understand the needs of the schools (although I don't feel it is as bad as everyone says it is here), and I think saving money now and in the future is the best approach. As long as the curriculum meets the needs of the students in real world applications and approaches.
Linux will at least give the students opportunity to learn about computers, thereby negating the initial "fear" that most people still have. It is a good start, but until the industry itself changes, the course can only be considered "generic" in the sense that it is NOT teaching what is in the workplace nor what the industry is doing.
it may not be the best approach, but it is definitely a start.You keep going until you die..."Me".
Since, you can have 400$ computer and WinOS+Office at education price is arround 300$ to 400$. Replacing WindowsXP and OfficeXp by LinuxMandrake for 30$ is half the price of the lab saved. But, if you also count the price for the other program on the computer :
- Photoshop (500$)
- Visio (200$)
You save more that the half of the price !
Depends on the software they are using. Office XP Standard has prices ranging from 396-449 (quick search with google). Most PC's in school contain Word and Excel so that can add up quickly. This is assuming they are using Office XP, don't know the price of the other versions.
As far as hardware costing $800, went to Dell and they had systems starting at $599, pretty close to the software. Besides you usually upgrade hardware less than software so the hardware cost is less than the software cost over time.
OS doesn't matter as long as you have a stable enough window manager you tell them what to do and they will do it.
Who cares about compatibility for kids? They're LEARNING, not doing anything useful. You could give 'em a Trash80 and teach them to program on it. How 'bout an apple II - teach them to code the 6502 by hand! We don't have them design a car, or audit a company, or transplant a heart, or file a brief to a court, or perform with a touring symphony. We teach them reading, writing, math, history, music. We let them PRETEND to do real things so they can apply their basic knowledge.
...I shall sit in a boat all day, drink beer, and come home smelling like fish)
They don't need Microsoft Office, they need to learn how to use a word processor, spreadsheet, database. They don't need AutoCAD. They don't Pro/ENGINEER. They don't need Timberline. They DO need to learn how to learn a computer program. They would do well to learn how a program works.
Teach them the basics, and don't throw away money on programs made, and priced, for the business market. If Linux works and keeps the budget under control - use it. I don't really care. I think there should be several OSs in each school, and each should be taught - at least the basics.
Give me a fish, and I shall eat for a day. Teach me to fish, and I shall eat for a lifetime. (or is it
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
At first glance, schools are a dream target for the BSA. They have lots of machines, minimal system administration, and plenty of rogue software installations from faculty & students. If you're looking for piracy, you won't have to look very hard if you visit a school. From the "Let's justify our existance" perspective of BSA, schools are a target that is too juicy to be ignored.
But there's a catch: Schools are chronically short of funds. Paying the BSA "fines" or submitting to extortion is not part of anyone's budget. Never underestimate the penny-pinching creativity of a school system. They won't hesitate to throw labor at a problem to make the short-term cost go away. Considering their resources (teachers on salary and students as slave labor), they have inexpensive man-hours available if there is cash to be saved.
What starts out as BSA's dream turns into a nightmare when the schools use their resources to migrate to Linux. For starters, M$ loses the upgrade revenue. Then we have students learning non-M$ technology. Parents who discover that the school finds M$ to be very expensive. If the schools are successful in ditching M$, they become role models for parents who face the same BSA nonsense at work.
At the risk of being slammed in moderation, thank goodness they are adopting Linux. Not because it's the way to go, but because it means they are no longer possibly pirating software.
... they are. Many people believe that for some reason Microsoft is evil because they charge for their product. They aren't.
... school districts crying poor ... Microsoft wanting money ...
... do they do it legally or do they do it on the sly.
Many many many people believe that tactics used are heacy handed
It's when the two get together you have horrible perceptions. Heavy handed tactics
Going to Linux solves the money issue and most of the potential piracy issues. Is it a victory for open source? Not so much as it is a victory for living within your means.
It's a choice for schools
I say legally.
of complying to EULA's.
License mgt costs Admin time sure but, getting notice of an audit could cost untold sums in legal and additional admin (checking to make sure, real sure) time in preparation.
I hope every school board across the nation is at least taking a look at this!
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
I wrote this letter to Mr Farrar, the managing editor of the Seattle Times on May 13. Mr. Farrar said he forwarded it to the Education and Technology editors, but I heard nothing after that and I have yet to see any report in the Times about Microsoft's threatening our local school systems with legal action. Here's the letter:
--
Microsoft is pressuring the 24 largest school districts in Washington and Oregon (including the Seattle school district) to adopt a new, expensive licensing contract despite having no evidence that the districts owe them anything at all.
Many of the schools' computers have been donated, and may not have all the original documentation, CDs, or license validation cards. Microsoft is threatening the districts with very expensive third-party audits unless school officials prove within 60 days that there are no unlicensed software products on any school computers. Several district IT directors have said the mandated time frame was difficult or impossible given their available staff and resources.
Microsoft has offered an alternative to the audit: to agree to pay around $40-$50 for each of their tens of thousands of computers every year. Whether that computer is a PC or a Macintosh, if it has the capability of running any Microsoft software (such as Office for MacOS), Microsoft gets $40 for it every year. Obviously, that money comes out of tax dollars that would otherwise be earmarked for teacher salaries or educational programs.
Microsoft has probably been paid in full already for all of the software currently installed on most of these computers. In addition, many of the computers are older models and don't have the speed or capacity to run the newest software, so they wouldn't benefit from keeping up with Microsoft's "upgrade cycle" anyway.
I know from experience that the process of auditing your software licenses is tedious, repetitive, and time consuming work. I'm a systems administrator for a Seattle manufacturing company. Technical workers' time is valuable, and the only people that benefit from the effort put into license auditing are Microsoft lawyers, employees, and shareholders. John Rowlands, director of information services for the Seattle School District, was quoted in a column in the Oregonian a few weeks ago: "They just want to squeeze every nickel out of us they can," describing Microsoft's strong-arm tactics. Is this the kind of attitude that our local schools should expect from our local businesses? It's infuriating! It would be different if there was a whistleblower -- if someone had come to Microsoft and informed them that a particular district or school was knowingly violating the software license agreements. There was no prompt from anywhere; they have absolutely no reason to believe that the districts are using unlicensed software. Microsoft just decided that they needed a little more room in the budget this year, so they are stepping up the routine auditing of their customers, and pushing their new, lucrative "software by subscription" business model. Put simply, it's a shakedown.
Is there another business in the country with such a callous attitude toward any of its customers? I realize that they haven't broken the law, but one would hope that concern about publicity would deter our local businesses from engaging in hardball tactics against our local school systems.
A search of your web site's archive database turned up nothing. Why haven't I seen any reference to this story in the Times?
> However Unix is not at all suitable for general
> introductory courses. If you have highly motivated and intelligent kids they could probably learn on anything, including JCL.
> But most kids are not in that category (just as well or else our skills would not be in the same demand).
At first glance, you might have a point. But last Saturday I heard from a schoolteacher in the Portland Public School District who clearly stated the opposite: the kids actually prefer the computers runing Linux because they are more stable. And she likes them because fixing problems in a Unix-like environment is far easier than tracking down the cause of another hex dump crash in Windows.
The problem isn't with the kids learning: they do quite fine at that. It's the adults who know nothing better than pointing & clicking -- or have to unlearn the three R's of troubleshooting MS Windows: reboot, reinstall, reformat.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
A computer lab isn't just a bunch of standalone computers any more. The computers are networked, and usually talk to at least a file/print server. Students then can store their work on the reliable server rather than on floppy disks or on the individual computers' hard drives.
Once you introduce a file server into the system, the costs of feeding the MS monkey on your back rise rapidly. How come? Simple: Microsoft servers require per-seat client licenses. This is a foreign idea even in the commercial Unix world, so it's understandable that Linux folks might think it unconscionable, but it's how it is for Microsoft-addicted organizations. Per-seat licensing can easily drive your cost of operation up, to the point where you may be paying several times your hardware cost in license fees.
Another savings is that Linux-based OSes can usually be made more efficient in their use of hardware resources than Microsoft systems. "Bloatware" is no myth, which is why the "minimum hardware requirements" for Windows keep escalating. While there are some things you can do in Windows to strip it down and make it more efficient, such as substituting an alternate graphical shell for Windows Explorer, these are not as well known among Windows professionals as the equivalents are among Linux and Unix professionals. Also, due to the less well-designed integration of the Windows system, such changes are more likely to make it unstable.
There are other ways, as well, in which Microsoft systems can cost your organization more. Microsoft recommends, for instance, that you separate your services out among several machines, so that if one crashes, the others remain. While this design is also used for Unix and Linux systems sometimes, it is much less necessary -- you can usually "get away with" less hardware without risking instability.
And then, of course, there are the clerical costs associated with license accounting ... the legal
costs and downtime associated with license audits ... and the miscellaneous other costs of
"compliance" with the lifestyle demands of a
Microsoft addiction. Like any other addiction,
dependency has opportunity costs and social costs
as well as the direct damage it causes.
So no, it is not at all surprising that a Linux-based computer lab would cost dramatically less to operate than a Windows lab, once you factor in all the costs involved.
No one said anyone "pirated" software. You don't have to make an unauthorised copy of software to get hit with expensive damages from an audit. All you have to do is be unable to come up with proof of purchase for every bit of proprietary software installed on your machines. Its "guilty until proven innocent" with these clowns.
I'd wadger that at least %90 of PC-owning households with legal OS's wouldn't be able to prove it, if audited. A small charity with a very limited budget is liable to be running on old donated PC's. What is the likelyhood that they will have access to the original boxes, reciepts, and/or licensing materials? Pretty damn slim. Microsoft could probably shut down nearly any little charity it wants to on a whim.
As an aside, I really don't like the term "piracy". It may serve Microsoft's interests to have you thinking that sharing useful software with your friends is morally equivalent to attacking shipping on the high seas, kidnapping, murder, etc., but this isn't even close to accurate. A more accurate term would be "unauthorized copying"
- "Randy Baker" linux iowa
- intitle:iowa intitle:linux schools
- intitle:linux 16 districts iowa
- As well as many others
You'd think that if they migrated 12,000 users to Linux almost a year ago that someone would have written an article or something.I suspect that the Iowa schools just migrated some/all of their servers to Linux and the article neglected to mention that "completely dumped Microsoft" meant that they completely dumped IIS in favor of Apache on Linux.
So, I may be missing something, but...
What authority does Microsoft or the BSA (or any private enterprise, for that matter) have to come in and 'audit' some business, government entity or charity? I can understand it if they have probable cause and go in under a warrent, accompanying law enforcement. But, just choosing a school district and saying "I'm going to audit you"? Why doesn't the district just say "Go to hell"? It seems to me that Microsoft has as much right to do that as Madonna does to come into my house and 'audit' my music collection for illegal copies of her music.
Sure, piracy is a big problem for the software industry, but there still needs to be some reasonable evidence of wrongdoing before you can inflict a search on somebody.
#1. "...the cost of operating system software is typically $100 per machine or less and the cost of hardware is typically $800 or more?"
This is incorrect. If you choose to purchase a copy of a Linux distribution from a distributor then you may pay anywhere from $20 to $120 for the operating system - true. This would be a one time purchase however, not for each seat as with Windows. And as a consultant that builds many systems and deploys many systems, Windows gets very expensive very fast, no matter what it's intended use. Linux does not. Furthermore, if the school or school district has a compitent IT staff (or just a tech or two that understand Linux) then a free download version of your favorate Linux distro (excluding SuSE) would be suitable. Myth #1 has been debunked.
#2. " There is an advantage to teaching kids on multiple operating systems. However Unix is not at all suitable for general introductory courses. If you have highly motivated and intelligent kids they could probably learn on anything, including JCL. But most kids are not in that category (just as well or else our skills would not be in the same demand)."
It is true that proficiency in multiple operating systems is beneficial. But this statement does not fit the context of this arguement. The purpose of Linux in schools is to save money (in this case). The use of Linux and open source tools foster and fuel creativity and give teachers more software options with a smaller budget (if they use *free* software, then almost no additional budget). Furthermore, whatever solution kick-starts the greatest amount of computing know-how in children is obviously the better choice.
#3. "Will they look at the csh command structure and conclude that computers are very hard to use, mysterious and probably deliberately so and resist using them? I suspect so."
I suppose that you have never seen or used KDE or Gnome?
Hardware cost is not an issue. School districts that have the money will buy the necessary hardware regardless of what OS goes on top. Those don't have the money, but still want computing services will re-use old hardware and/or attempt to get donated hardware. So in both cases, the hardware is usually acquired regardless of the software solution.
The benefits of using Linux come with the costs involved in the economy of scale when school's IT departments begin to grow substantially. The overwhelming majority of software for Linux, including the OS itself, is provided for free, forever. There are going to be support costs either way, and the difference here is simply finding adequate support for Linux at school-district affordability. And compared to Windows support, the costs are going to be about the same, so no problem there.
As far as applicability, school-based computers need to serve a very limited subset of functions -- word-processing, computations, email, web browsing, perhaps graphic design, and code compilation. Linux boxes can handle this set of functions easily, and all with free software.
So why not use Linux? The only reason I can see is initial learning curve time based on the new environment, but kids can pick up things quickly, so this ought not to be a factor. Once the learning curve is overcome, students and teachers alike will be able use Linux just as easily as Windows, and with minimal cost to the school district.
Basically, there isn't a good reason not to use Linux in the schools.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Say whatever else you want to about him, but you've got to give RMS this: selling free software (including linux) on the basis of anything other than freedom is risky business.
I remember once, just out of highschool with an awful sales job, (for home pop machines, if you can believe it), my sleazy boss used to always say: never try to sell people on cost. They'll get bogged down with numbers and you'll never make the sale. Sell them on xxxx (in that case convenience) and let people work out the numbers for themselves. His logic was that numbers were easy to fudge when you're trying to rationalize something, and better they play around to get the numbers to make themselves happy than they catch you playing around with them.
In the context of free software, the same logic almost holds:
-for a big enough or strategic enough account, you can't beat MSFT on financial terms. That is, they can always either reduce/forgoe the licensing fees or heck, _pay you_ to use the stuff if they want it badly enough. (Just ask Miguel about Vicente Fox and the Mexican initiative.) You can't, (well, _I_ can't), outbid Microsoft.
-on technical merit, they can argue any particular point into the ground, or even, for big enough or strategic enough cases, find what's broken and 'fix' it. (gasp)
But sell freedom and you're onto something. (You _may_ even have people/past-victims making the technical/financial arguments for themselves.) The best part is that, when they use sledgehammers like the BSA, MSFT make the case for you.
Try as they might, MSFT is going to have a hard time erasing the memory of these audits/sales-tools from the overworked/underfunded school systems. Sure, they let you slide on the licensing now... but stick with them and you'll never be free of the threat of the audit. (And that whether you're in compliance or not.)
There's a phrase used in American history which mentions the first shot of the American Revolution was "the shot heard around the world".
:) We just need the press to pick this up.... Dan Gilmour, CNN, USAToday, etc where are you?
The Microsoft audit policy might just be known as "the backfire heard around the world". With Linux stability, usefulness, and capabilities where they are today, there's not much stopping most public school systems from switching all their classrooms and labs to Linux. Maybe they'll need one or two with Wine or even a WinFrame system or two but it'll still be cheaper running Linux and "look ma, no more audit threats"
BANG! What a backfire.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus